Crackdown on Dealers Who Arm Criminals / U.S. steps up enforcement of gun laws

Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Monday, May 31, 1999

The indictment of four East Bay residents on federal gun trafficking charges late last week has focused attention on the growing problem of licensed firearms dealers who abuse their position to arm the underworld.

In the past six years, federal firearms investigators in Northern California have uncovered four major gun trafficking cases in which licensed dealers have sold thousands of guns to members of the underworld -- guns that were later used to commit crimes.

Federal firearms agents say ferreting out cases in which gun dealers working under official licenses sell guns to criminals has become a primary area of concern, with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms making them a major investigative priority.

In its budget proposal to Congress this year, the agency has requested $12.6 million for enforcement programs designed to reduce the illegal acquisition, possession and use of guns by armed career criminals, firearms traffickers, and those barred from buying firearms under the Brady Bill.

"ATF's top priority is the reduction of violent crime in an effort to protect the public," the bureau's chief in San Francisco, John P. Malone, said earlier this year. "To that end, impacting the flow of illegal firearms and illegal firearms trafficking in our communities is our focus."

In last week's case, a Hayward man, Sean Patrick Twomey, 31, was indicted for forging a new expiration date on his federal firearms license in order to illegally purchase more than 600 guns for resale in the Bay Area.

Twomey, who was working for a Web page development company in Santa Clara until his arrest by federal firearms agents on May 7, also is accused of counterfeiting a second federal gun license that he used to buy weapons.

At least 50 of the guns were altered, with their serial numbers obliterated to make them more difficult for police and federal agents to trace. The alleged plot was uncovered when some of those guns were seized by police during arrests in San Francisco in September 1997.

When federal agents were asked to trace the guns, they learned of the falsified license documents and began collecting evidence for a criminal case against Twomey and three associates. In the course of the investigation, they discovered that two men who were helping Twomey sell the guns, Jason Jeffries and Cellouse Ham, were both convicted felons who were barred by law from possessing firearms.

During the 18-month investigation of Twomey's ring, agents learned that dozens of the guns he sold had been recovered by police at crime scenes.

Twomey is currently in federal custody, and is scheduled to make his first court appearance in connection with the indictment next Monday.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents uncovered a similar operation in Sacramento three years ago. In that case, an erroneous criminal history check allowed Sahr Jahrvouhey, 27, to obtain a federal dealer's license in March 1993, despite the fact that he had a criminal conviction for a violent crime -- brandishing a gun during a confrontation.

Court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento show that during the brief period his license was active, Jahrvouhey bought and sold 446 guns -- more than 100 of which were later seized by police investigating serious crimes including homicides, armed robberies and assaults.

Federal agents were not aware of the slipup until a few months later, when San Jose police arrested a group of Vietnamese juveniles in a series of violent armed takeover robberies at Silicon Valley microchip companies. During the arrests, investigators seized 13 guns from gang members and asked the bureau to determine where they had come from.

A series of administrative inquiries led the agents to Jahrvouhey, who was living with his mother in a Sacramento condominium. When Jahrvouhey's probation officer -- accompanied by bureau agents -- called on the gun dealer, they found him in possession of a loaded Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol and $13,000 in cash.

In 1997, Jahrvouhey was convicted of lying on his license application and failing to maintain records of the guns he had sold. He eventually was sent to prison for two years.

Among the guns he sold were scores of cheap handguns that are popular among criminals, including at least 19 Intertec 9 semiautomatic pistols like those used in the Columbine High School and 101 California St. massacres.

That same year, a federal jury in San Francisco put David Wilkins, 28, in prison for nearly six years for his involvement in a trafficking operation that put 225 firearms on the street, 65 of which were later recovered at locations where such crimes as rape, robbery, drive-by shootings and homicide had taken place.

According to an affidavit by bureau Agent Gabrielle Solleder, 18 of those guns turned up in crimes in the Bay Area. Others were taken away from suspected drug dealers in places as far away as Kentucky and North Carolina.

Wilkins, who had a variety of underworld contacts, had worked with his father, Charles, 59, who had legitimately obtained a federal firearms license for use in his business, Chuck's Guns. According to court records, Wilkins would sell guns to his criminal contacts under the counter -- with no questions asked -- while his father would report that the guns had been stolen from his home or car.

Again, federal firearms agents learned about the conspiracy by tracing guns used in criminal activity back to the ostensibly legitimate dealers who last possessed them. When they began checking into the Wilkins' family's story, they determined that the father-son team was acting as a weapons conduit for the underworld.

Charles Wilkins later pleaded guilty to three counts of violating firearms statutes, and was sentenced to four years of probation, six months of home arrest and a $10,000 fine. The senior Wilkins received a lighter sentence in part because he helped federal agents persuade his son to plead guilty to more severe charges, thus avoiding the need for a trial.

In a brazen variation on the other cases, federal firearms agents arrested a 32-year-old East Bay resident named Gentry Green for illegal firearms sales in late 1992 after Richmond police spotted him and an associate on a Richmond street corner, literally selling guns out of the trunk of their car.

When agents investigated, they learned that Green, too, had slipped through the cracks of the licensing system. Court records show he had obtained a federal firearms collector's license from the bureau in 1991, even though he had been convicted of carrying a loaded gun in public in San Francisco three years earlier.

In February 1995, Green was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison and three years of probation.